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By Mary McGarry Morris
Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club Selection: 1997
A dark secret lies at the heart of Mary McGarry Morris's extraordinary novel, Songs in Ordinary Time. Rooted in the delicate
web of emotions, lies, and truths that bind people together, the story takes place in the primarily Catholic town of Atkinson,
Vermont, during the summer of 1960. Here Marie Fermoyle struggles to raise her three children. She already has two strikes
against her: she married above her station and now is divorced from her alcoholic husband, Sam. That he is the town drunk and
a laughingstock only further marks the Fermoyles.
Enter Omar Duvall, a confidence man. He comes to the door asking for bread and sees an opportunity. Soon he has insinuated
himself into the Fermoyle family, promising Marie companionship, love, a willing pair of shoulders to share her burden.
Twelve-year-old Benjy knows something terrible about Duvall, but, desperate for anything that will make his mother happy, he
hides the truth. This silence gives Duvall time to bring Marie to the brink of financial disaster and lead her sons into mortal
danger.
Songs in Ordinary Time includes a chorus of other Atkinson inhabitants: town cop Sonny Stoner and his dying wife; insurance
salesman Bob Haddad, so enthralled with his beautiful wife that he's willing to steal for her; and Father Gannon, the young
priest with whom Marie's daughter Alice becomes involved; and the Klubock family next door, who epitomize all that is normal to
young Benjy. With these lives threaded through her bittersweet tale of the Fermoyles, Morris strikes all the notes of loneliness,
hope, and familial love.
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